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Not only is Minnesota’s infrastructure in badly need of repair but so is the system set up to pay for it. But it is not just Minnesota; the entire process for how America pays for roads, bridges, and other forms of infrastructure is vastly outdated, reflecting a carbon-intensive consumptive model of the world. For that reason, whatever the Minnesota legislature likely does this session when it comes to infrastructure and transportation funding, it will be outmoded from the start.

The November 2014 elections already seem ancient history. Yet in barely seven weeks a host of major events have transpired, raising interesting questions about Barack Obama and the future of American politics, both short and long term. Let’s review some of them and see what they potentially mean.

Something is wrong with the law if those entrusted to enforce it repeatedly violate it. This is the troubling story of race and Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and police brutality in Cleveland, Ohio. But these three examples raise even more profound stories about the role of the law in a democratic society regarding whose legal norms are enforced and how. It is the story of legal legitimacy.

So Obama finally showed some backbone and did what he should have done before the election–he acted on immigration. Had he done this before the election as he said he would (if Republicans did not act) then maybe more Hispanics would have voted for Democrats and the November results would have been different. Now we see Republicans engaged in a faux act of anger, declaring that they will get even. The Republicans should be grateful that Obama acted–it takes immigration off the table without Congress having to act, or not act, and therefore it removes a thorny problem for the GOP. But foolishly and predictably the Republicans have protested, only guaranteeing that they will continue to guarantee that Latinos vote for Democrats, perhaps for the next generation.

I am not sure if it is bad math or bad journalism, but contrary to popular accounts, it is highly unlikely that 450,000 voters in Minnesota split their votes between Dayton or Franken at the top of the ticket and a Republican legislator further down the ballot.

Elections are supposed to be the way people select their leaders. Increasingly that is no longer the case. The courts now occupy an enormous role in determining the outcome of elections–even before they start. That is clearly the case this year where too often the goal has become to rig elections by making it harder for some, especially people of color, the poor, and the young, to vote. This especially seems to be the strategy of Republicans who continue to push the Second Great Disenfranchisement in American history.

“We the people” are the first three words of the Constitution. Legally it should be simple to decide who is part of that we. But as the Hobby Lobby decision showed when the Supreme Court ruled that a corporation had religious rights, it is not always clear who or what the Constitution considers a person or a thing. One would think that it is simple–persons have rights, property does not. The reality is that throughout American history the constitutional line between property and personhood has been thin and contentious.

Money is not speech. Corporations are not persons. Most of us intuitively understand that. The Supreme Court clearly does not. In Citizens United v. FEC, it ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to expend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections. More recently, in McCutcheon v. FEC they struck down the overall caps on how much money wealthy individuals can contribute directly to campaigns and to party committees. The Supreme Court’s decisions are wrong and they deserve to be overruled with a constitutional amendment to restore the First Amendment to its rightful place protecting American democracy, instead of as a tool to suppress speech rather than enhance it.

Many of us learned about government and how it works by watching “I’m Just a Bill on Capitol Hill.” Part of the ABC School House Rock series, it depicted the process of how a bill becomes a law in Washington, D.C. It describes the role of citizens, members of Congress, and the president in legislating. Yet it left out an important actor–lobbyists. In so many ways, legislating would be impossible–good or bad–without lobbyists, and that is equally true in Minnesota.

Far less than you think. Journalists and politicos want to write the big story and find trends. If there is a special election in one race they see in it a harbinger of a trend. Think of Eric Cantor losing to a Tea Party candidate and how from one race everyone is saying that the immigration issue did him in and therefore Republicans will refuse to compromise on this topic. Maybe it was immigration that cost him his seat, or maybe it was that he lost track with his constituents or simply was complacent in his campaigning. This is what did Jim Oberstar in.